Week Leading Up The week leading up to the Dress Drive, we tried on dresses to take promotional photos! We also finished organizing and packing up the dress room in order to set it up at the Junior High. We had to saran wrap the dresses to compress them and that really made me break a sweat. It was a much more physically demanding process than I had originally thought because I had scratches all over my hands from sequins! We had student and parent volunteers help set up decorations and move the display so it was easy to see everything, and we are so thankful for the amount of help we received when setting the venue up. We made dress size signs and hung them up and just did finishing touches to make the Dress Drive even more special. There was a lot of communication among us at the high school and the staff volunteers at the junior high in order for this event to run smoothly. The Event The day has finally come! After 6 weeks of prepping, February 15th had arrived. The gym at the junior high had turned into a full blown dress shop! It was organized by color and size and also by event. There were racks for short dresses, wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, and prom dresses. The locker rooms were made into dressing rooms and mirrors were moved in. In the cafeteria there was a silent auction and also vendors set up to entertain and interest the people who were waiting. All the customers seemed to be enjoying their time and it was so great to see all of our hard work pay off! Aftermath
The total profit that came from the dress drive was around $2,300! This money will go to various organizations such as Riley Children's Hospital. We are so proud of the turnout and just the overall success of the event. Now, it's the week after the dress sale and we are wrapping things up. The dresses were put back into storage and are still organized according to size. We personally wrote notes to the three stores that kindly donated dresses to show our appreciation. They are being mailed this week and hopefully the stores will enjoy our letters! My team and I are so happy that this dress extravaganza worked so well and allowed many people to find their dream dress!
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Donations
Bella Bridesmaids and The Perfect Stitch both have contacted us back and have generously given us donations. Also Stephen's Prom is also donating dresses to us! We have organized pick up times with each of the places and they were so kind to work with! We are also getting a shoe donation, which will include many pairs of formal shoes! We ended up receiving around 60 dresses from Bella Bridesmaids, 25 from the Perfect Stitch, and around 15 from Stephen's Prom. This helps us update our inventory and appeal to more customers so we are so thankful! Organizing The biggest time and energy consumer of this project is definitely organizing the dress room at our intermediate school. When we first started it was a mess, there were dresses in boxes, on the ground, and so many outdated dresses. So we have been working hard to get it organized. We have put all the dresses into size racks and then we are hopefully going to get them organized by color in the size categories. Soon, we have to move the dresses from the intermediate school to the junior high since that is where it is taking place. Background The Dress Drive is a fun event where donated prom dresses/formal dresses/wedding dresses are sold for cheaper prices. This allows girls who have financial needs to still get a dress of their dreams! Also all profit goes to organization such as Riley Children's Hospital and Hope Center Indy. The Dress Drive is February 15th this year, and we are diving in head first! We are in contact with Robin Pratt, Kerry Taylor, and Melissa Hurst while we begin the process of the Dress Drive. We were given the jobs of organizing dresses and getting donations. So we have named ourselves the "Donation Committee" and we have made packets to give out to prom/bridal stores to ask for donations. These are the papers that have been put into the packets, along with Robin Pratt and our Donation Committee Business Cards! Getting Donations We have started delivering packets and talking to sales representatives and managers of formal dress stores. We've gone to places such as David's Bridal, Raelynn's, and Sophia's. One store that we have gone to that isn't well known is called "The Perfect Stitch." They were very kind when we talked to them in the store and they have contacted Kerry Taylor and they are going to donate some dresses! They also have spoken with another formal dress business that had gone out of business recently and are trying to see if they can donate what they had left in their inventory! Getting the Word Out While we have been running around trying to get donations, we have also been hanging up posters for the Dress Drive around our community and our school. Many New Pal businesses are now repping the Dress Drive poster! We still have to contact other local schools and give them the posters as well. Next Steps We have to get vendors to come and set up booths at the drive, we also still have to organize left over dresses from last year's drive. Furthermore, the donation committee has to pick up donations that are coming in, and organize those too! We have been asked to make signs for sizes that we can use when organizing, and we are excited to make them look very cute! |
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